Favorite Obscure and Semi-Obscure Blues Albums — per decade

Back in the ’60s, I grew up listening to white musicians covering black music: Stones, Beatles, Animals, etc., etc.

Late in the decade, I started listening to the original black artists. The first thing I ever heard in the genre was Muddy Waters’ “Electric Mud.” It was a revelation at the time, though in retrospect it was a lousy album — designed to sell to clueless white kids, such as yours truly.

Since then, I’ve been a blues fan, and have been writing and playing the blues (guitar) for decades. Beyond the standard canon, here are a few obscurities I love from the various decades:

(’70s) Son Seals, “Midnight Son” — a great album; his others are terrible. This one features great song writing, guitar work, and vocals.

(’80s) Treat Her Right, “Tied to the Tracks” — more blues rock than blues, but a great album with wonderful song writing and intelligent lyrics from the (better) forerunner to Morphine

(’90s) Doug Sahm, “The Last Real Texas Blues Band” — all covers, but absolutely wonderful — this album is a veritable definition of “swing”

(’90s) Willie Edwards, “Everlasting Tears” — wonderful song writing, wonderful guitar playing, wonderful, intelligent vocals.. Willie signed perhaps the worst recording contract in the history of music, and doesn’t even have the copyright to the songs on this CD. I want to cover a couple of them on our next CD, but can’t; I’ll probably end up covering one or two of his more recent songs, very likely the very apropos “Police State on the Rise.”

(’00s) Sugar Thieves, “Live” — an incredibly good CD from the best band from the hellhole 190 km northwest of here. Great dueling male and female vocals

Finally, since you asked (or didn’t) here are a few cuts I wrote or co-wrote and recorded with The Pinche Blues Band: